1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pedal-operated parking brake for an automotive vehicle, and more particularly to parking brake assembly with a foot brake pedal easily assembled and adapted to be secured to a fixed portion of the vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional pedal-operated parking brake is generally mounted on a fixed portion of the vehicle in the vehicle driver's foot space. When the parking brake is to be applied, the foot brake pedal is depressed by the driver's foot so that a tension force on a brake cable is exerted through a brake pedal lever and transmitted to cables to actuate brakes on the vehicle wheels. At the same time, the brake pedal lever is engaged with a pawl and prevented from pivoting, so that it is held in a locked condition. When the vehicle is started, a release knob is pulled for actuating a release lever to disengage the pawl from the brake pedal lever. Eventually, the brake pedal lever is unlocked.
When the brake pedal lever is returned to its initial position with a tension force applied thereto, it is blocked resiliently by a damper. This damper may be mounted on the bracket in the same plane as the pivoting plane on which the brake pedal lever pivots about its pivot pin mounted on the bracket, as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model laid-open publication No. 56-44955 (1981) or Patent laid-open publication No. 57-37056 (1982). This damper is easily assembled on the bracket by simply forcing a support shaft for a rubber member to insert into a bore formed on a support arm extending from the bracket so that the support shaft is disposed in the same plane as the pivoting plane of the brake pedal lever. In this damper, therefore, the support arm extending outwardly from the bracket is to be disposed, whereby additional space is necessitated. On the other hand, the damper may be mounted on a support pin fixed to the bracket perpendicularly to the pivoting plane as disclosed in British Patent No. 2,156,750, so that its side wall contacts the brake pedal lever in its blocking operation. However, this damper is assembled in such manner that the resilient member is mounted on the support pin and then calking process is applied to the support pin, or a nut is screwed on a threaded portion of the support pin. Accordingly, the parking brake assembly with the above described damper is hardly assembled in an automatic assembly line.
The pawl has a tooth which is engageable with gear teeth of a sector or a ratchet wheel member which is fixed to the brake pedal lever. The sector is sometimes made independently from the brake pedal lever and assembled theretogether, since the brake pedal lever and the sector are made of different material for several reasons, e.g. their weight, hardness or cost. In assembling them, however, a pair of connecting pins are inserted into corresponding bores which penetrate both the brake pedal lever and the sector, and then the connecting pins are calked to fasten them tightly, as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Utility Model laid-open publication No. 57-17854 (1982). Similarly, two rivets are used for fixing a sector to a bracket in U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,307. Thus, two connecting pins or rivets are to be disposed, and the calking process is necessitated at least two times. In this connection, single calking process may be applied, but causes other defects.
In the prior pedal-operated parking brake assembly as disclosed in the above British Patent or Japanese laid-open publications of Patent or Utility Models, the release lever, the pawl and the brake pedal lever are overlapped. Also overlapped is a return spring for biasing the release lever in the direction to urge the pawl to disengage from the brake pedal lever. Accordingly, the thickness of the parking brake assembly as a whole becomes quite large, since not only the thicknesses of every components are totalized but also a certain clearance is to be provided between each component. The pawl and the release lever are biased by each spring independently in the aforementioned prior parking assembly, as cleary shown in the Japanese Patent laid-open publication No. 57-37056, where the release lever is pivotally mounted on a supplemental bracket.